News

Class system affects child mental health

Researchers have urged that health and education policy takes account of findings showing that a child’s relative age in their school class can have a direct impact on their mental health.

A survey of over 10,000 children in England, Wales and Scotland has revealed that the younger a child is compared to the rest of their class, the more at risk they are of psychiatric difficulties. While the impact of relative class age is small at an individual pupil level, it could prove ‘important at a public health level,’ the researchers say.

‘In terms of public health measures,’ says report coauthor Professor Robert Goodman of King’s College London’s institute of psychiatry, it would help if there were ‘far greater flexibility in England and Wales, as there already is in Scotland, about whether parents could defer their child for a year if they don’t seem ready for school.’

Other useful measures would be measures to help teachers remember who are the younger children, Professor Goodman suggests, and possibly greater flexibility about when children take public exams.

The researchers point out that of the 8 million children aged five to 15 in Britain, an estimated 750,000 have mental health difficulties. ‘Around 60,000 of these cases of child psychiatric disorder might be prevented if the youngest and middle children in a school year were no more at risk than the oldest children,’ the report, published in the British Medical Journal states.

Based on accounts from parents, teachers and pupils themselves, the researchers found that, even after considering ethnic background, social class, family dysfunction and educational background, the relative age of pupils made a difference.

In England and Wales, where the youngest children in a class are those who reach five between May and August, those who fared least well psychologically were the youngest group. In Scotland, where the youngest in a class are those born in January and February, the same was true.

Previous beliefs that mental health was affected by ‘season of birth’ have been discounted by the study.